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 Search Engine Bytes #2
Questions & Answers with Sumantra Roy
Q - I have been trying to get my site listed in the Open Directory for more than 6 months now but am yet to get listed. I am completely frustrated because I can't seem to get into Google without getting into the Open Directory. What do I do?
A - You are not alone - there are plenty of other web site owners who seem to be at their wit's end on how to get listed in the Open Directory these days. It seems that the Open Directory is facing an acute shortage of volunteer editors and is under increasing pressure from spammers trying to get their sites listed in the Open Directory. Both these factors have contributed to the current problems being faced by numerous legitimate web site owners who are trying to get their sites listed. Here are a few suggestions that might help
Firstly, make sure that your site is in fact ready for the Open Directory. For this, read my article at:
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/open-directory.htm
The fact that getting into the Open Directory has become so tough means that it is all the more important that your site follows all their rules and guidelines - when they have so many sites to evaluate and so few volunteer editors to do so, even the smallest of errors in your site can lead to your site getting rejected.
If you are sure that your site satisfies all their guidelines, then try the following one after the other:
i) If the category to which you are trying to submit your site has an editor, write a very polite mail to her telling her that you have been trying to get your site listed in that category for a very long time and then requesting her to evaluate your site for possible inclusion in the category.
ii) If the category does not have any editor, or if the editor does not respond within a few days, write to the editor of the next higher level category in the hierarchy.
iii) If the second editor does not respond either, then see whether there is any other category in the Open Directory which would fit your site. If there is, submit your site to that category.
iv) If none of these work, try to submit your site to the regional category which represents the specific geographic region in which your organization is located.
In the past, the Open Directory used to provide the search results for Lycos, AOL and other top web sites. However, as of today, this is no longer true and the only importance of the Open Directory is that it more or less ensures that your site will be included in Google. Hence, HOW or WHERE you are listed in the Open Directory is no longer as important as it was earlier - what matters is WHETHER you are listed. Thus, if you can't get listed in your most preferred category, it makes sense to try and get your site listed in some other relevant category even if that
category wasn't the one you wanted.
Furthermore, while getting listed in the Open Directory is a good way of getting into Google, it is definitely not the only way. You can get into Google by getting lots of other sites to link to you as well. Hence, while you should definitely keep on trying to get your site listed in the Open Directory, instead of depending solely on that to get you listed, try to get other sites to link to you.
Doing this will dramatically improve your changes of not only getting listed in Google, but also getting a top ranking in it. You can find more information on how to get other sites to
link to you by reading my article at http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/link-popularity.htm
Q - While I know that the number of external sites that are linking to me is very important for getting good rankings, does it matter how pages within my site link to each other? Or is that not very relevant?
A - How the internal pages in your site link to each other is indeed extremely important. Here are a few things to keep in mind.
Firstly, you need to ensure that each page for which you are trying to get top rankings in the search engines is no more than 2 clicks away from your home page, i.e. when a visitor comes to your site, it should not take more than 2 clicks of the mouse for her to go from the home page to each page in your site for which you are trying to get good rankings.
In case the navigation structure of your site is such that your visitors require more than 2 clicks from the home page to reach some of the pages for which you are trying to get good rankings, the best way to handle this is to create a Sitemap page which contains links to all of the internal pages in your site.
Then, you need to link the Sitemap page with the home page with a text link which says something like "Sitemap". This ensures that when a search engine spider comes to the home page, it can spider the Sitemap page, and after that, can spider the internal pages in your site which are linked from the Sitemap page.
Now, some search engines refuse to spider pages which only contain links to other pages. Hence, if the Sitemap page only contains links to these internal pages but contains no other content, the search engines may ignore this page. Thus, what you can do is to add a short description of the content of each internal page after you have added a link to that page in the Sitemap page. This ensures that the search engines will not ignore this page.
The second thing that you need to do is to try and ensure that whenever any page in your site links to another page for which you are trying to get good rankings, the anchor text (i.e. the text used to link from one page to the other) contains the keyword for which you are optimizing the second page at least once, preferably near the beginning of the anchor text. Here's an example:
Suppose you have 2 pages in your site called page1.htm and page2.htm. Let's assume page1.htm links to page2.htm and that you are trying to optimize page2.htm for the phrase "home equity loans". Then, the anchor text used for the link from page1.htm to page2.htm should contain the phrase "home equity loans" at least once, preferably near the beginning of the anchor text itself.
This also applies to the anchor text of all the links present in your navigation bar. In most sites, the navigation bar says things like "Home", "Products", "Services" etc. Depending on the nature of your site and the keywords that you are targeting, it may not always be possible to add keywords to the anchor text of these links.
But, if you can do it, I strongly recommend that instead of just saying "Home" in your navigation bar, say something like "Debt Consolidation - Home" assuming you are trying to optimize your home page for the keyword "debt consolidation". Instead of saying "Services", say "Credit Counseling Services", assuming you are trying to optimize the Services page in your site for the phrase "credit counseling".
This applies to the Sitemap page in your site as well. In the Sitemap page, make sure that the anchor text of a link to another page in your site contains the keyword for which you are optimizing that page.
An excellent method for analyzing the linking strategy (for both internal links and external links) of your top ranking
competitors and figuring out why they are ranked well (so that you can emulate them) is a new software program that I have been using called Optilink. It tells you exactly how your top rankings competitors have achieved their rankings and how you can improve upon what they have done. In addition to this, it also does the following:
i) Allows you to do "what-if" analysis - it tells you what sort of rankings you can expect if you adopt a particular linking strategy.
ii) Helps you determine the quality and relevancy of sites that are linking to you and the quality and relevancy of sites you are asking for links from.
iii) monitor the sites that you have exchanged links with to ensure that they are still linking to you and are linking to you the way you want them to.
You can find more information on Optilink at: http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/optilink/
Q - Just read in your newsletter that Yahoo! is now takings its results from Google. Given this, in your opinion, does it still make sense to pay Yahoo! the $299 it requires for getting listed?
A - First, let's analyze the benefits from a listing in Yahoo!'s directory at this point of time:
i) It will improve the link popularity of your site.
ii) You will get traffic from people who browse through Yahoo!'s directory.
How important are these benefits? If you analyze the search results from Google, you will find that even for extremely competitive keywords, quite a few of the top ranked sites are not listed in Yahoo!.
This means that it is possible to get good rankings in Google (and hence Yahoo!) for very competitive keywords without getting listed in Yahoo!'s directory. This in turn means that while a listing in Yahoo! will improve the link popularity of your site, if you manage to build up your link popularity using other methods (exchanging links with other sites, for example), you can do well even without the link popularity benefits of a listing in Yahoo!.
In order to learn the different methods by which you can improve the link popularity of your site, please check my article at: http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/link-popularity.htm
Regarding the second benefit, only a very small percentage of people actually browse through Yahoo!'s directory and hence, the traffic that you get from this source will be minimal at best.
The disadvantages of trying to get listed in Yahoo! are:
i) You, of course, need to pay them $299 per year.
ii) In order to understand the second disadvantage, we first need to analyze exactly how Yahoo! is displaying its search results right now.
When you search for anything in Yahoo!, the search results are being taken directly from Google. If a particular page that is included in the search results is NOT present in Yahoo!'s directory, then the Title and Description that is displayed for that page is the same as what would be displayed in Google. However, if a particular page in the search results is also listed in Yahoo!, then the Title and Description for that page is being taken from Yahoo!'s directory.
Now, the Title of a site in Yahoo!'s directory is always the official name of the site. Yahoo! also insists that the
Description of a site in Yahoo!'s directory be free from any hype whatsoever.
This means that if you are listed in Yahoo!, the attractiveness of your site when it is displayed in the search results will be very limited (from a marketing standpoint) compared to sites that are not listed in Yahoo!'s directory.
Furthermore, since it is very difficult to get Yahoo! to change anything once you are listed in its directory, you cannot tweak the Title and Description to make it more attractive to human beings.
Given these facts, I would currently not advise people to submit their sites to Yahoo!. Now, if you analyze Yahoo!'s financial statements, available at http://docs.yahoo.com/info/investor/metrics.html, you will find that the Fees & Listings section accounts for a significant portion of their total revenues.
Even though the Fees & Listings section includes revenue from things like listings in Yahoo! Personals, one can safely assume that the $299 per year submission fee that Yahoo! obtains from its Business Express submission service accounts for a significant portion of the revenues in the Fees & Listings section.
Hence, Yahoo! can ill - afford to have a significant drop in the number of web sites which are using its Business Express submission service.
And that is precisely what can happen once webmasters start realizing that the Business Express submission service no longer provides as much value as it used to. If that happens, Yahoo! may be forced to modify its search results again and start giving some sort of preference to web sites listed in its directory. At that point of time, it may again make sense to pay the $299 to get listed.
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Article by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the most respected search engine positioning specialists on the Internet. To have Sumantra's company list your site in the major search engines on the Net, go to http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/ For more advice on how you can take your web site to the top of the engines, subscribe to his FREE newsletter here:
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/newsletter.htm
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